for some relief and comfort from above, but Thy best provision is hard stones!  If Thou dost glory in thy God, and dost verily believe the promise that is made, command that these stones be bread.  But evident it is that so Thou canst not do; for if Thou couldst, or if Thy God would have showed Thee any such pleasure, Thou mightest long ago have removed Thy hunger, and needest not have endured this languishing for lack of food.  But seeing Thou hast long continued thus, and no provision is made for Thee, it is vanity longer to believe any such promise, and therefore despair of any help from God’s hand, and provide for Thyself by some other means!”

Many words have I used here, dearly beloved, but I can not express the thousandth part of the malicious despite which lurked in this one temptation of Satan.  It was a mocking of Christ and of His obedience.  It was a plain denial of God’s promise.  It was the triumphing voice of him that appeared to have gotten victory.  Oh, how bitter this temptation was no creature can understand but such as feel the grief of such darts as Satan casts at the tender conscience of those that gladly would rest and repose in God, and in the promises of His mercy.  But here is to be noted the ground and foundation.  The conclusion of Satan is this:  Thou art none of God’s elect, much less His well-beloved Son.  His reason is this:  Thou art in trouble and findest no relief.  There the foundation of the temptation was Christ’s poverty, and the lack of food without hope of remedy to be sent from God.  And it is the same temptation which the devil objected to Him by the princes of the priests in His grievous torments upon the cross; for thus they cried, “If he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him; he trusted in God, let him deliver him, if he have the pleasure in him.”  As tho they would say, God is the deliverer of His servants from troubles; God never permits those that fear Him to come to confusion; this man we see in extreme trouble; if He be the Son of God, or even a true worshiper of His name, He will deliver Him from this calamity.  If He deliver Him not, but suffer Him to perish in these anguishes, then it is an assured sign that God has rejected Him as a hypocrite, that shall have no portion of His glory.  Thus, I say, Satan takes occasion to tempt, and moves also others to judge and condemn God’s elect and chosen children, by reason that troubles are multiplied upon them.

But with what weapons we ought to fight against such enemies and assaults we shall learn in the answer of Christ Jesus, which follows:  But He, answering, said “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  This answer of Christ proves the sentence which we have brought of the aforesaid temptation to be the very meaning of the Holy Ghost; for unless the purpose of Satan has been to have removed Christ from all hope of God’s merciful providence toward Him in that His necessity, Christ had not answered directly to his words, saying, “Command that these stones be made bread.”  But Christ Jesus, perceiving his art and malicious subtility, answered directly to his meaning, His words nothing regarded; by which Satan was so confounded that he was ashamed to reply any further.